On Assignment
by Ssergit
Summary: Tonks and Lupin are assigned to an observation post how will they spend their time? Lots of lovely discussion and tensions, of course! Sequel to Rise and Shine. Complete.
1. On Assignment

A/n: Due to all the amazing reviews for Rise and Shine, I've decided to reward you all and write a sequel. I'd pictured it as a one-shot, but sometimes you just reach a point where you think, 'now that is the end of a chapter.' So I did. I'll post more of it later. Once again, THANKS for the reviews; I was dancing all over the house all week, and it's your fault!

Title: On Assignment

Summary: Tonks and Lupin are assigned to an observation post; how will they spend their time? Lots of lovely discussion and tensions, of course! Sequel to Rise and Shine (trust me, read that one first)

Rating: G-er than G

On Assignment 

"Good morning, Tonks, my dear," said Molly Weasley brightly.

"I don't see what's-" the younger girl began to reply as she normally did, but stopped when she caught the amused glance of Remus Lupin, who held up one finger and gestured to the still-blooming bush outdoors. Feeling a girlish giggle start to bubble up, she forced herself to scowl at him, and sat down with a plate full of breakfast. "Mmmm, lovely," she murmured with a mouth full of ham.

"Thank you," blushed Molly, as the other residents of #12, Grimmauld Place waved and grunted their agreement, all similarly engaged in their breakfasts. The Weasley matriarch decided to attempt to shift their interest to someone else, and said, "So glad to see you enjoying the mornings, Tonks."

Lupin nearly choked on a sip of orange juice.

"Constant vigilance!" Mad-Eye Moody said grimly, and clapped the younger man on the back a few times, nearly knocking him off his chair. He made to repeat the gesture, but Lupin held up a hand.

"I'm quite all right, thank you," he said in a choked whisper. Moody just grunted, and shoveled another forkful of food into his mouth.

"You sure?" asked Tonks in an angelic voice. Remus knew that she knew he was fine, and just wanted the chance to mock him. He _would not_ look at her…

Her eyes were gold today, and dancing with pure mirth. His own narrowed at her warningly, and she beamed. Somehow he knew that waking him up at the crack of 10 AM on a Saturday wasn't going to be her only revenge.

"Good instincts, Tonks," barked Moody. "Got to watch out for our partners, after all—you'll be going along with Lupin on his next mission."

"I-" Tonks said in surprise, shooting the werewolf a glance. The look on his face was a mirror to hers; clearly this was a new development.

"Moody," he began, but was cut off by the ill-tempered Auror.

"Don't give me that!" Moody said before the younger man had said more than his name. "I know it's just a observing job, but I'll need you to do something special for me, and that means you'll have to leave someone there to keep the surveillance. Can't have people wandering off in the middle of things, after all." Mad-Eye stumped off into the other room before Lupin could say a thing.

"I guess that settles that," he said with a hint of a smile.

"Think he knows it's hard to argue with him like that?" she asked, staring after the grumpy Auror.

"I'm sure of it," Lupin replied with a grimace.

oOoOoOoOo

Lupin stuck his head into the library, looking for his assigned partner for the night. Sure enough, Tonks was there, staring out the window at the falling darkness. Discretely, he cleared his throat—but he mightn't have bothered with sublety. At the sound, Tonks seemed to jump nearly out of her skin, and toppled sideways onto an armchair. He watched as she picked herself up again and shot him a reproachful look, as if he'd set loose another thunderstorm instead of merely coughed.

"Ready to leave?" he asked, ignoring the look.

"Yep!" she replied in a mock-cheerful voice, and she made her way carefully across the room to where he stood at the door; she seemed to be trying very hard not to trip, which struck him as quite endearing.

Their assignment was, on the whole, rather boring. There was a pub nearby that Moody was convinced was being used as a meeting point for recruiting Death Eaters, and the irascible Auror had rented a room in the building across the street from the entrance. Their job (previously just Lupin's) was to simply watch for known Death Eaters or sympathizers. It had seemed a waste to Tonks, but Moody had explained that they had to tread carefully; once they knew if their hunch was correct, they could proceed to more interesting ways of gathering information. She hadn't bothered to ask why it needed to be a two person post tonight, as Moody probably wouldn't have told her anyway.

"So," Tonks said as she watched him charm the window so that no one could see in, "tell me about yourself." She plopped herself down on the leather armchair, looking as if she were settling in for a long night. Lupin just looked at her. "What?" she said, flushing slightly under the penetrative gaze. "I mean, we have to pass the time somehow…" Lupin just raised an eyebrow. It was starting to get on her nerves, the way the man was able to make her blush just by staring.

"Well, we _could_ pass the time by watching the pub entrance," he said, blandly. Turning his back to her, he settled himself on a chair facing the large window, and lifted a parchment and quill from the case he'd brought with him. Tonks felt a burst of annoyance. _Nice of him to assume I meant to skive off our surveillance duties,_ she thought, bitterly.

Some of what she was thinking must have shown on her face, because he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Tonks, that sounded awfully…professorial of me."

"It did, rather," she said matter-of-factly, dragging the chair over to the window next to his. He watched her in amusement.

"You could have used magic, you know."

"Did you really want to clean up after it once it had gone through the window?" she said, tartly.

"Good point."

"Knowing oneself is half the battle," she said imperially, changing her hair into a severe grey bun with chopsticks sticking out at odd angles. They both laughed.

"Which reminds me," said Tonks, changing her hair back into a short green bob and clasping her hands together in mock excitement, "tell me about yourself!" She leaned forward, giving him her rapt—albeit sarcastic—attention. Lupin sighed.

"I knew you wouldn't do it," she said, giving up the enraptured schoolchild look and swinging her legs over the side of the leather armchair.

"Think I'm boring, do you?" asked Lupin, dryly.

"No!" she protested hotly. "It's just well…you are rather secretive; I didn't expect you to give it up on our first…" she let it dangle there for a long moment, making it seem as though she would choose a more provocative word, "assignment." Tonks grinned.

Lupin looked at her in shocked amazement for a second, and then drew a trembling hand through his hair and shook his head before saying, "You, on the other hand, are far from boring."

"Thank you." She watched as he turned away from her to inspect the page on his lap, transforming from nervous to businesslike faster than she could change haircuts.

"And I'm glad to hear you'll still be able to respect me in the morning," he said nonchalantly, not moving his eyes from the paper in front of him.

"I'll…" Tonks just stared at him. He'd neatly turned the tables on her, yet again.

When it became obvious to her that his entire attention was focused on the list of Death Eaters that Moody had given him, the young Auror sighed, and began watching the steady trickle of people heading into and out of the pub across the street. After a while, he handed her the list so she could peruse it as well, and they sat in silence for nearly an hour before the boredom got to her.

"So, what's your favorite color?" she asked him, out of the blue.

He didn't bat an eye before replying, "I knew you wouldn't be able to stand it."

"Stand what?" she asked, a trifle defensively.

"The silence," he said, finally looking at her, a strange glint in his eyes that looked suspiciously like mischief. "You're hardly ever completely quiet, you know. If you're not talking to someone or listening to music, you're singing, or talking to yourself."

She realized he was right—she was almost always talking to herself or humming or something. But how did _he_ know that?

"Hang on a minute," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. "How do you know that? What do you do, watch me or something?" Even as she said it, she realized she shouldn't have. He would probably get offended and punish her by staying silent for the whole rest of the…

"Observation is a skill, Nymphadora," he said, holding up a hand before she could even start to say 'don't call me Nymphadora.' "Surely our mission here shows its usefulness as more than just a means of getting to know one's friends and housemates. Using observation in that manner isn't such a bad thing, really." He paused, looking like he was finished, and then seemed to rush on as if he wasn't quite sure he wanted to continue. "Something you know, full well, as you recognized me by the sound of my laugh last Monday, and not, as you claimed, by what _shoes_ I was wearing." He looked at her shocked face, and surprised her by grinning and leaning over to whisper conspiratorially, "I wasn't wearing shoes." He felt a pleasing sort of warmth shoot through him at the hot blush rose from her collar all the way to her hairline.

Just then, the bells of a nearby church chimed 10 pm, and he stood, being careful to place his parchment and quill neatly on the desk in the corner.

"I should be back within the hour," he told her. With that, he took his hat and coat from the rack, and was gone. Tonks was still blushing.

_Damn the man_, she thought, not for the first time. He always seemed to know exactly how to get under her skin, just for a moment, before retreating back into his proper Englishman exterior. But oh, how she loved when he let lose like that! Tonks decided to head _that_ thought off before she got herself into trouble.

One thing she was certain of—she would not be able to stand sitting silently through any more of this watch duty. Tonks got up and paced around the room, careful to keep her eye on the pub's front door. Ahh, but what could they talk about? She knew that she'd probably have to trick him into chatting with her, as her direct questions seemed to bounce right off of him as though he'd cast a shield charm. She considered charming him drunk…that always seemed to bury inhibitions. She knew that was underhanded, though.

Tonks had planned on spending her time alone coming up with a way to trick Lupin into telling her a little about himself, but wound up seeing someone she was _sure_ was a good friend of Lucius Malfoy go into the pub and then back out in the space of fifteen minutes. She was just finishing writing down her observations of the man when Lupin returned, looking as pleased about the time spent as she was.

"Did you see him?" he asked, and she answered yes before she'd even realized what he'd said.

"Oh," she said, trying not to show how pleased she was that the errand wasn't something more secretive. "Was that what you left for, then?"

"Yes," he said, coming up behind her and reading her scribbled notes about the suspected Death Eater. "Moody suspected him and told me to check the tube exit around 10:15, as he gets off of work at 10."

"Are we done here, then?" she asked, trying to make it sound as casual as her previous question, although her hope for the answer was the complete opposite.

"No, I'm afraid you're stuck with me for the whole night," he said, his back to her as he retrieved his quill and parchment. She was glad of this, because his innocuous comment had sent the color washing over her face yet again. Her pique at his having made her blush twice in the space of an hour made her braver than she normally would have been.

"In that case, would you care to make it interesting?" she said, the challenge in her voice mimicked in the expression on her face. She wasn't disappointed; he whipped around to look at her so quickly that he nearly tipped his ink bottle over. _Now, who's clumsy?_ She thought, gleefully. Examining his shocked expression, she saw the beginnings of a blush, and felt victory. _That's 2 for you, 1 for me, and a whole night ahead of us!_

"I…" his voice shook, and he paused to steady it. "I beg your pardon?"

"You know, like play a game, or something," she faltered, a little less brave now that he was making eye contact instead of faced away from her.

"A game?" he parroted.

"God, Remus, you're acting like I'm asking you to play one-on-one 'spin the bottle' or something!" she exclaimed, saying it so quickly and without thinking that she'd blurted out his name. Rather than shocking him, however, it seemed to simply jolt him back into his button-down personality.

"I'd hardly think you'd suggest that, Tonks," he said mildly, settling himself down on the chair by the window. Then, just as she was starting to lament the fact that he'd buried himself behind his normally staid exterior, he said, "we don't even have a bottle."

_TBC_


	2. Passing the Time

A/n: Thanks again for the reviews, they really are delightful, and I love getting them! Chapter Two 

**Passing the Time**

"Just because I nearly failed Stealth and Tracking doesn't mean I was rubbish at transfiguration," Tonks said cheekily.

"My apologies, N-" Lupin stopped for a split second, recognizing the dangerous look in her eyes, and swiftly transfigured one word into another. "Not meaning to offend."

"Obviously not," she said, glaring at him so that he could see she knew what he was _really_ going to say.

"So, no 'spin the bottle,' then." Pushing a strand of green hair behind an ear, she leaned over and made as if she were marking something off a list. She could feel him watching her. "Well, there goes my suggestion," she said, sticking the quill into her hair. "Your turn."

Lupin just stared at her.

"What's wrong, _Moony_, didn't you and your friends play games ever?" She said, emphasizing his playful nickname.

"Whether I played games in school or not is irrelevant, _Nymphadora_."

"Touché," she muttered.

"We could play the quiet game," he said, seeming to focus his attention very seriously on his parchment as he spoke.

"The-" Tonks could _not_ believe he'd just said that.

"You know, where we both try to stay quiet and see which of us can stay silent the longest?"

"Yes, I know what it means, you-" she broke off as he looked at her inquisitively, one eyebrow raised; the whole expression seemed to beg her to act childish and validate his suggestion of the quiet game. Oh, she'd show him, she thought. She'd wipe that smirk right off his face.

"Fine." Tonks got up and leaned against the wall defiantly, crossing her arms and cocking her head to the side. "Starting now." He nodded his acquiescence and turned back to the task of monitoring the pub entrance, no doubt secure in the knowledge that _he_ wouldn't be the first to speak. _Well, let him,_ Tonks thought with glee. I'll show him.

She started by pacing the floor, being careful to step on any creaky boards multiple times. After the third squeak from a particularly annoying floorboard, Lupin turned to her with a pained expression. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say 'I can't help it that the floor is old!' After practically hopping on the loudly protesting section of floor for two minutes with hardly a reaction from the room's other occupant, Tonks ramped it up a little.

Counting on the fact that his senses were probably more acute than a normal man's, she started to walk towards him, this time attempting to make as little sound as possible. Somehow she knew that a quiet Tonks would probably unnerve him more than a clumsy and noisy one, and she was right. Fully three times he lifted his head to listen carefully, each time she froze in place and hardly dared to breathe. The fourth time, he almost turned to look for her, but instead let out a great sigh and bent back to the parchment he was reading. She almost asked him aloud if sighing counted as speech, then caught herself. _Tricky bastard._

Tonks knew she was clumsy. She also knew that other people expected her to be clumsy. She _also_ knew that, generally speaking, the longer she went without doing something disastrous increased the expectancy that she would, and soon. She was counting on this.

She'd stood in the same spot for roughly 5 minutes straight when he lifted his head again. She had been sure to make no noise, and the fact that she was making him nervous by doing absolutely nothing gave her a splendid feeling of power. _Now, for the coup de gras._

Making sure his ink bottle was nowhere nearby, Tonks deliberately tripped and fell almost on top of Lupin.

"Bloody hell!" he fairly shouted, and looked as if she'd just scared him out of his skin. Tonks got up quickly and leapt not-quite-gracefully onto her leather armchair, crossing her legs and smiling at him.

"I win."

"You-" he looked genuinely angry, and she felt her self-confidence start to crumble a bit. Then, he closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair a bit shakily, and started to laugh. The laugh turned into a full-blown chuckle, and when he opened his eyes, they were filled with mirth. "You," he said again, much more gently, "are a worthy opponent, Miss Tonks." The praise flowed through her veins like rich hot chocolate.

"Thank you, Mr. Lupin." Tonks grinned, and continued in a decidedly mischievous voice, "and now, I believe it is once again my turn to pick a game." He sighed deeply, and then a ghost of a smile flickered across his face. She gave him a questioning look, and the smile returned in full force.

"I am beginning to understand why Moody carries around a hip flask." With that, he settled himself down again, looking out the window, his shoulders shaking with his laughter.

Once again, she stared at him. It was becoming quite a habit. She was, however, getting sick of letting him get the last word.

"Well, how about 'truth or dare,'" she said, before she could stop herself. _Whatever possessed me to ask THAT!_ She asked herself in despair. He sat there for a long moment; each second that passed when he _didn't_ say something ramped up the tension in her for when he would.

"Is this entire night a sort of game where you attempt to always get the last word?" He asked, his voice a mix of curiosity and annoyance.

"If it is, it's not working." She said, dryly. Tonks watched as Lupin fought with a grin, and lost. He turned to her, still smiling.

"All right then—but I get to go first."

_My mouth is going to start to hurt if he keeps shocking it open so bloody much,_ she thought. _Although I suppose there are worse things to stare at…_ She saw that he was scribbling something on a spare bit of parchment, which he showed to her with somewhat of a cheeky grin on his face.

'_One for my side._' She scowled at him. Lupin then took the paper back and wrote something else on it.

'_Truth or dare?_' He was chuckling at her now.

"I'm not completely speechless!" she protested, ignoring the fact that she had been not a moment before, until the insufferable man had goaded her. She decided to up the ante.

"Dare."

But his face didn't fall as she had expected it would. In fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that he'd _wanted_ her to pick dare—which he confirmed with his next statement.

"All right, then," he said, all of a sudden seeming to be completely fascinated a fray in the sleeve of his robe, "I dare you to be silent for an hour."

She was going to kill him.

She was going to look up that Ginny Weasley and have her teach her the bat-bogey hex. She was- Lupin had picked up his quill again and prepared to write something down on the same scrap of parchment, and she couldn't let him think he'd stunned her speechless _again_. Even though he had.

"You play dirty."

"Thank you."

Before she let her mind dwell on the other implications of their brief conversation, Tonks popped out of her chair and raced over to the ratty bookshelf, grabbing an old book at random and placing it on one of the arms of her chair. She then removed her wand—determinedly not allowing herself to frown at Lupin, who'd started to discretely edge away from her line-of-sight—and promptly transfigured the volume into a canary yellow alarm clock. She ostentatiously set it for one hour, and faced the thing at her fellow Order member. Then, she made herself comfortable and started to contribute to the surveillance. After all, she figured, with _that_ thing staring at him, the man in the chair next to her would most likely go batty before the hour was up.

She wondered, idly, what kind of sound a bright yellow goggly-eyed alarm clock would make when it went off…

TBC 


	3. Yellow Alarm Clocks Notwithstanding

A/n: I don't mind telling you that at one point I was laughing so hard reading this I had to go lay down. I've started to put a thread of romance into it; also, I apologize for any weirdness in formatting—this site is completely confusing when it comes to allowing one to separate blocks of text correctly (as evidenced in the a/n and chapter title of the last entry—I still haven't been able to fix it right). Also, while this is the last chapter of THIS fic, it is not the last chapter in this series of them (the first of which being Rise and Shine)

Chapter Three Yellow Alarm Clocks Notwithstanding 

Tonks was bored out of her gourd. That is, if she'd had a gourd, she would most certainly have been bored out of it, most likely in the first 10 minutes of her dare-imposed silence. She'd spent that time watching a spider crawl across the space of the window that displayed the entrance to the bar. Then, she'd amused herself by coming up with funny stories about the people going into the building, only to come to a realization _after_ she'd nearly choked herself trying not to laugh out loud—that was a _very_ bad pastime for someone with an imagination like hers who was trying to be quiet. So, she'd very ostentatiously checked the time. _Bugger_. 15 minutes had passed.

She considered trying some of her father's calisthenics, but at the last minute, she remembered what had happened the last time she'd done that, at home. Her dad's cat _still_ hadn't forgiven her. Something told her that Remus would probably count bouncing on a creaking floorboard for 45 minutes as a violation of a silence pact (and she figured even she might go batty after that long), so she selected a not-quite-as-boring-looking-as-the-others book from the bookcase and sat back down.

"Taking the easy way out, I see," he observed without looking at her.

Damn him. He KNEW how much she hated letting someone else have the last word. Sulking silently, she put the book back.

The next 3 minutes were spent watching the spider as it had reappeared on the windowpane, and she'd almost cursed aloud as it meandered back below the sill. Just her luck, she couldn't remember any non-verbal spells that would manage to get it back up where she could see it. Tonks was rather delighted nearly 20 minutes later, however, after exhausting any spell idea she'd had and checking the clock. Only ten more minutes.

Over this whole time period, Lupin had not looked at her more than once, and this made her brave enough to decide on a very pleasant way to pass the remaining time. She settled herself in her chair very comfortably, and looked at him. She watched the way his eyes crinkled ever so slightly when he read something he found amusing. She admired the way his brownish grey hair fell over his forehead as he leaned over and picked up his quill when it fell. She spent 3 whole minutes drinking in the sight of his long fingers on the parchment, and when she looked back at his face, she saw with alarm that he'd been watching her, too. Their eyes locked, and she could have sworn she stopped breathing. She didn't need to—he would breathe for her…

And then the bright yellow goggly-eyed alarm clock sneezed loudly and covered Lupin with a shower of sparkling gold feathers and glitter.

Tonks closed her eyes. Maddening, hysterical laughter was hovering in her throat, trying desperately to get out. She was going to fail, she was going to laugh and ruin everything, she was…

"Time's up, I suppose." Lupin said in the most calm, dry voice imaginable.

Tonks fell off her chair and laughed so hard she got hiccups—but he wasn't done there.

"I suppose you knew it was going to do that?" he asked in the same tone.

"Don't-hic-talk! Hic!" she stammered, sure that it'd kill her if she had to laugh any harder. She managed to open her eyes, meaning to clean him up and apologize, but the sight of Remus Lupin covered with electric yellow fuzzy feathers and sparkling gold glitter was too much for her. She laughed and hiccupped for nearly five minutes, finally winding down, when the evil man spoke again.

"I suppose it could be worse," he said dolefully, causing her to hold her stomach and look at him reproachfully through her streaming eyes. How could it _possibly_ be worse! "You could have had a camera," he explained. Comprehension dawned slowly, and she struggled to get up and find her wand, only to succeed after a long and painful search to turn around and see him completely himself again.

"That was mean," she said, trying to smother another hiccup.

"It was the best revenge I could manage at the time," he said, apologetically.

"Speaking of revenge," she said, delighted, "it's your turn to pick." Tonks gave up on attempting to charm her hiccups away and simply conjured up a glass of ice water.

"Oh Lord," he said. She grinned. "I'll go with the lesser of the two evils—truth."

This was too much to have expected. Tonks felt like she was at a banquet with all her favorite foods arrayed before her, and only able to pick one. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a question lurked, one she really shouldn't-

"What sort of woman do you fancy?" she asked. Well, she'd always been impulsive, hadn't she? A thought struck her, however. "That is, if you-"

"Yes, I do," he said, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"Good," she said, and blushed. He looked at her oddly, and then sighed.

"Right—the question. Err…" he looked over at her again.

"If you want to ask why I asked you, you'll have to wait your turn," she said cheekily. At that, he looked away, but she could have sworn she saw a slight tinge of color on his face. Lupin? Blushing? "No more stalling," she said sternly.

"Time to pay the piper, as it were," he remarked, referring to her earlier revenge comment. She nodded. "Well, I-" he stopped, and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture that she was fast becoming enamored with. "You know, I don't normally think about-"

"Start."

"Right." He closed his eyes, and she made sure to watch for activity at the window. They _were_ on a mission, after all, whether or not she was on a mission of her own. "Intelligent, amusing, witty," he said, a ghost of a smile on his face. Tonks allowed herself to hope that the fact of his not beaming in pleasure might mean he wasn't thinking of a particular girl—and then realized that it meant he wasn't thinking of her, either. Then she mentally kicked herself for acting like a 13 year old schoolchild, and blurted out something that had her kicking herself literally.

"Please, _don't_ say 'graceful,' she groaned, and then covered her head with a cushion from the armchair. "Forget I said that."

"If you like," he said, and he didn't sound upset or offended. The very fact that he didn't changed the tone of the conversation in a way that her asking what his ideal woman was like had not. It was almost—but not quite—an admission that liking one another was possible, if not very probable. She could hear him laugh from under the pillow, and peeked out just as he said, "Although I was going to add, 'can stand long silences,' so…" She thought it was very mature of herself not to throw the pillow at his smug face.

"Be good, or I'll have a very loud sneezing fit at the next Order meeting to watch you flinch in terror," she said, grinning impishly at his shudder.

"Speaking of the time," he said dryly, "I think we're done here, for now." He stood up, gathering his things, and said over his shoulder, "We shall have to continue the conversation at a later date, I'm afraid."

She didn't tell him that she'd consider that a promise to continue their game, as well. As she thought this, she felt a strange sensation of movement and looked around to find that he was levitating the chair—with her in it—back to its original location.

"You should have warned me!" she said indignantly. "I could have fallen off."

"You could have done that, whether or not the chair was moving, Tonks."

"That was a cheap shot," she said sullenly.

"I take what I can get," he said, once again managing to get the last word. It really was exasperating, she thought.

After reporting the night's findings to Moody, the two of them had both gravitated to the library at Grimmauld Place—Lupin for his nightcap, Tonks to return a book she'd been reading. Rather than retreat to her room with a new one, she settled herself on a couch across the room from him and started to read. It was so engaging that when he got up to leave, the movement startled her. She looked up to see him staring at her curiously; the expression on his face was one of someone for whom a conclusion was only minutes away. He blinked as if awaking from a deep thought, and spoke to her.

"Well, it appears I was wrong, Miss Tonks," he said solicitously. She raised an eyebrow in question. "It appears you _can_ sit silently for long periods of time." His grin was rather playful as he waited for her indignant response.

"As I recall, you disallowed me any means of amusing myself other than to stare at you," she said, refusing to let him see how he'd irked her.

"Next time you wish to do so," he said with a laugh, "you have my permission to stop _without_ the need to douse me in confetti." He turned to leave.

"_Must_ you always have the last word?" she asked his back, exasperated.

Lupin paused for a long moment, finally turning to face her. Hands clasped before him, eyebrow raised, he stood there, looking at her, with a cocky smile on his face. Two long minutes passed.

"All right! All right," She said, with a begrudging smile. "I get the point." He nodded at her deferentially, and started for the door again. Lupin had almost disappeared through the doorway when she heard it.

"Good."

He had gotten the last word again. Damn it all.

The End 

Don't worry, a sequel IS planned, although confetti is optional.


End file.
